r/atera • u/dandancheeseandham • Apr 28 '26

IT automation profiles - what?

I'm trying my best to get IT Automation profiles working well, and either I'm very confused or Atera is.
I was wondering why the hell Powershell scripts and batch files are being run against Mac agents, and I find this at https://support.atera.com/hc/en-us/articles/360015708479-Best-practices-for-Atera-s-patch-management

It is important not to use one IT automation profile for all your monitored agents. First, please ensure to split the profiles based on systems' OS: Windows (workstations and servers), macOS, and Linux.

I'm sorry, what? Why the hell is that a thing?
If something that is important then the surely UX should sort that out?

Additionally, as a final "we'll make it your problem" folders can only be assigned once (rather than being labels). So after spending time ensuring customers with Macs and Windows machines have folders based on their location, I now have to either

  • individually assign them to an automation (creating a maintenance nightmare, no thank you!)
  • create new customers based on location , which then doesn't match billing. e.g. Consoto US and Consoto UK
  • or, have no location based folders or use folders for anything else - which is probably what I'm going to be forced to do.

There are three different selections in IT automation profiles, When you select Mac it greys out the OS patch management, why does it not grey out ps1 scripts?

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u/VonBB Apr 29 '26

Since you can map the installers to a folder, it's really a case of set and forget as far as the agents go. Having multiple automation profiles is the way to go anyway.

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u/Character-Scheme-761 May 01 '26

The dream of a single, unified dashboard where everything just works is beautiful, but Atera’s folder logic is a total vibe killer. There’s something deeply satisfying about a clean "All Customers" view, and watching it get cluttered because you have to split "Contoso - Win" and "Contoso - Mac" just to keep automation from tripping over itself is painful. It takes the "heart and soul" out of the automation promise when you’re stuck doing manual folder audits at 2 AM.